And as he did, a tiny figure struck his gun hand. Tinker Bell had little mass, and she was still a bit groggy, not having fully recovered from her earlier encounter with Karl the bear. But she was able to hit Slank’s hand with just enough speed to mar his aim.
The bullet whistled past Peter’s head.
“Thanks, Tink!” Peter shouted, swerving into the sky. Slank roared a curse and hurled the pistol after Peter’s fleeting form. One of the riflemen fired at Peter, but also missed. Peter darted down and again swooped through the trilithon area. Some of the men ran after him.
“Ignore the boy!” groaned Ombra. “The trunk! Get the trunk!”
As Ombra sought to organize the men, Peter circled and flew past Molly.
“Get your father and mother!” he called. “Get them away from here!”
“Father’s been shot!” shouted Molly.
“Attend to your mother, then,” said a voice behind her.
Molly turned. It was George.
“I’ll get your father,” he said. He went to Aster’s prone body and, with a grunt, managed to heave the unconscious, bleeding man onto his shoulder. Molly ran to her mother, took her arm, and began to pull her away from the center of Stonehenge. George followed, staggering under Leonard Aster’s weight. Molly looked back: Peter was still swooping back and forth over the trilithons.
What is he doing? Molly wondered. As she pulled her mother away, her eyes went back to the trunk.
Ombra, ignoring the flying boy, was directing one of the men to close the latches. The man did so gingerly, not pleased to be touching the trunk. When he was done, Ombra gestured to him and another man.
“Pick it up,” he said. “It cannot harm you now.”
As the men warily reached down to pick up the trunk, Peter swept overhead.
“NOW!” he shouted.
One of the men yelled and pointed. The others’ eyes followed. From behind one of the massive upright trilithon stones emerged the enormous furry mass of Karl.
“Shoot him!” groaned Ombra.
The two riflemen fumbled for their weapons, but Karl, moving with astonishing speed and agility, was upon the men before they had a chance to aim. With a swipe of his enormous paw, he sent the closest of the rifles skidding across the dirt like a twig. Both riflemen turned and ran, one still clutching his weapon but not daring to stop and try to use it. The other men started to follow, but found their path blocked by the forbidding form of Ombra.
“Get the trunk!” growled Ombra. “I will deal with the animal.”
The men, their eyes on the bear, did not move. Ombra glided forward. Karl kept coming. The green column of light was now above Karl and slightly to his right, casting a shadow to the bear’s left. Ombra swerved toward it.
“Look out!” shouted Peter. But his warning meant nothing to the bear, which, preparing to fight the oncoming dark shape, reared up on its hind legs, an act that only lengthened and exposed its shadow.
Ombra flowed swiftly toward it.
A chiming sound filled the air—a sound both Karl and Ombra had heard before. Both knew what it meant; neither had time to do anything about it.
Tink flashed her brightest flash. She was exhausted, and this effort was far weaker than the one she’d managed earlier that evening, the one that had foiled Karl out on the road. This flash, intended to protect him, was half as bright, if that. But it was enough for now.
Ombra, emitting a screech that made Peter’s skin crawl, flattened into an elongated black teardrop shape and was driven back out of the trilithon area. The other men stumbled after him. Karl roared in blind confusion, lunging this way and that.
“Mister Magill!” shouted Peter urgently. “Get him out of here now!”
Magill, who’d been waiting for Peter’s call, sprinted out of the darkness and ran to Karl. The big man growled as he approached; Karl immediately dropped to all fours. Magill took a handful of the huge bear’s neck fur and began leading him away from the trilithons. He looked back at Peter, who had landed next to the trunk.
“Be careful, lad,” he said.
“I will,” said Peter. “Please find Molly. She went that way. Her father needs help.”
“All right,” said Magill. “Good luck.” He turned to go.
“Wait!” said Peter.
Magill looked back.
“Give this to Molly,” said Peter. He removed the locket from his neck. Peter didn’t know whether there was any starstuff left, or—even if there were—whether it would be enough to heal Leonard Aster, assuming he was still alive. He threw the locket to Magill, who caught it one-handed, nodded, and was gone.
Peter knelt by the trunk. He looked up: the green snake was still there, still searching back and forth. But it was clearly higher now; it was receding. Peter glanced at the moon; the ghostly reddish circle was just a shade lighter. The totality was ending.
Peter reached for the first of the two trunk latches.
“Shoot him!”
The groaning command came from behind him, but from a distance. He opened the first latch.
He winced at the crack of a rifle shot; blinked as a bullet twanged off a trilithon stone next to him, rock fragments stinging his face.
“You missed!” came the groaning voice. “Fire again!”
He reached for the second latch.
UNNNH.
Peter did not hear the shot that hit him; only his own grunt as the bullet tore through his left shoulder, hurling him forward onto the trunk. He slid facedown onto the dirt, wondering why he didn’t feel anything.
He struggled to get back up. His left arm didn’t work. He rolled sideways and the world became a red blur as the pain suddenly shot from his shoulder, surging through his body. He struggled to clear his vision, and got to his knees. The trunk was still in front of him, one side smeared with a dark liquid that Peter realized was his blood. He reached his hand for the second latch.
Then he felt the cold.
Half turning, he saw the dark form, saw Ombra’s cape moving onto the shadow cast next to his kneeling body. His hand touched the latch as the cape touched his shadow.
It lasted for only a few seconds, the struggle between the boy and the dark thing for Peter’s soul. Neither combatant had ever been in a fight so intense; each was surprised by the other’s strength and resourcefulness; each learned something from the other. Paradoxically, it was Peter’s grievous wound that saved him: the pain surged from him into Ombra, and the shock was enough to weaken Ombra’s attack for an instant.
In that instant, Peter, who had never lost sight of his goal, opened the second latch and flung open the trunk.
In the next instant, as the world filled with light, Peter felt Ombra’s hostile presence leaving his body. Then he heard Ombra’s scream, which seemed to come from everywhere—as, in fact, it did, Ombra having disintegrated into thousands—millions—of tiny shadows, of specks of dark dust, of near-nothingness, blown far across the landscape in every direction, disappearing into the distance, leaving nothing where he had been but an old burlap sack lying on the ground, open and empty.
The last thing Peter felt was the wonderful warmth flowing into the hole in his shoulder, taking his pain away. The last thing he saw was the green column of light plunging down toward the light pouring from the open trunk, like a giant cobra striking. Peter saw that, and then he saw nothing.
Slank, Nerezza, and the other men saw the blinding flash, heard the horrid scream.
Nerezza and Slank looked at each other.
“What now?” said Nerezza.
“We go back,” said Slank, refusing to accept that the boy had beaten him again. “We still have a rifle. We can—” He stopped, seeing the fear in Nerezza’s eyes, and those of the men, who were backing away.
“What is it?” said Slank. He turned.
Wolves. Huge wolves. Five of them. Moving toward the men, spreading out.
Hunting.
Slank turned back: Nerezza and the other men were running aw
ay across the grassland.
With a curse of rage, Slank took off after them.
Molly also saw the brilliant flash and heard the unearthly scream.
Dear God, she thought. Please don’t let that be Peter….
In her arms, Molly cradled the head of Leonard Aster, who, she knew, was dying, or dead. She had removed his helmet; his face was white, his eyes open but sightless. Whether he breathed at all, Molly could not tell.
Nearby stood her mother, or the walking corpse her mother had become. George stood next to Louise Aster.
“Molly,” he said, pointing. “Look.”
The light column was changing color. At the base it had turned from green to a startling blue, which even now was turning gold. The color transformation was moving progressively up the column, into the sky, at astonishing speed; in the next few seconds, it had traveled from Earth to the moon. A second later, in the blink of an eye, the column was gone altogether.
The strange light had been seen by millions of people, in England and beyond; there would be newspaper accounts in which astronomers would explain that the unusual celestial display was actually a rare, but not unheard of, form of aurora borealis, or northern lights. This explanation would be almost universally accepted, except among the residents of the village of Amesbury. But they had learned, as their ancestors had learned over the centuries, to keep their views to themselves.
George was staring at the moon.
“It’s done, then,” he said. “The Return. It’s done.”
“Yes,” said Molly, looking down at the lifeless face of her father. “It’s done.”
As she spoke, something dropped onto the dirt next to her. It gleamed in the light of the moon, now emerging from shadow.
“Peter told me to give you that,” said Magill, who was trailed by the now-docile Karl.
Molly snatched the locket off the ground.
Please let there be some left.
She held the locket over her father’s chest, opened it, tilted it.
Yes!
The golden light poured from the locket, bathing her father’s chest, flowing toward the wound, flowing into it. She looked at his face; nothing. She shook the locket; no more light flowed from it. Had it not been enough?
“Molly—”
Leonard Aster’s voice was weak; to Molly, it had never sounded so wonderful.
“Father!” she said. “Oh, Father—” she was sobbing now, her tears falling on her father’s face. “I’m sorry,” she said, dabbing them with her sleeve. “I’m so sorry—”
“No,” he said, “I’m the one who’s sorry, Molly. You only wanted to help. But the starstuff, is it—”
“Gone,” she said.
He frowned. “The Others? Did they—”
“No,” she whispered. “The Return. It happened, Father.”
Leonard closed his eyes. “Thank God,” he said.
So focused were Molly and her father on their reunion that neither noticed the shadow. It was one of a number of shadows that had emerged, cautiously at first, from the burlap sack that Ombra had left behind. One went trotting off in search of a certain wolf; several others set off across the grassland in the general direction of London. A particular shadow raced along the ground among the Stonehenge stones, darting this way and that, until it found what it was looking for.
Louise Aster blinked. “Where am I?” she said.
“Mother!” said Molly, getting to her feet.
“Molly?” said Louise. “Leonard, is that you?”
“Louise!” said Aster, also standing, with some effort.
The three of them embraced; words, for the moment, being impossible.
Then Molly jerked away. “Oh, no,” she said.
“What?” said Leonard.
“Peter!” she said, pointing toward the trilithons. “He was in there!”
“We must go find him,” said Leonard, his face grim. “He’ll need help, if he’s not…If he hasn’t…Molly, you stay here. Magill, come with me.”
“I don’t think we should go in there,” said Magill gravely.
Molly looked stricken. “Why not?” she said.
Magill’s face broke into a broad smile.
“Because he’s right there,” he said.
They all turned at once. Walking toward them—unsteadily but purposefully—was Peter. In his hands, gently, he held the sleeping form of Tink. His hair was a wild tangle; the front of his shirt was torn and dark with blood.
Molly, tears streaming down her face, ran to him, put her arms around him, hugged him hard.
“Peter,” she said. “I was so worried!” She looked at his bloody shirt. “But you’re hurt! Are you all right?”
Peter looked at her somberly for a moment. Then he smiled a smile so broad that his teeth shone in the moonlight.
“Never felt better in my life,” he said.
CHAPTER 95
A SWIFT, SURE SHADOW
THEY SPENT THE REST of the night at Gecierran, having traveled back to the mansion in a moonlit caravan of humans, horses, bear, and wolves.
They ate ravenously, then fell, exhausted, into bed, all of them sleeping late except Leonard Aster, who rose at dawn and rode to Salisbury to make travel arrangements and to send and receive a series of encoded telegrams.
He returned shortly after noon with a coach to collect the others. They traveled to the Salisbury train station, where they boarded a train with a coach reserved just for them. Once the train was moving, Leonard, with his wife by his side, addressed Molly, George, and Peter.
“First,” he said, “I want to thank the three of you for what you did. Without you, there would have been no Return. The starstuff would now be in the hands of the Others. And Louise would be…Well, I’d rather not think about that.” Leonard looked at his wife, who squeezed his hand, her face pale but peaceful.
“So,” said Aster, “I’m deeply grateful to all of you. And, Molly, I owe you an apology. I obviously underestimated your resourcefulness, your abilities, and your courage—as, apparently, did the Others. I don’t expect you to make a habit of disobeying me, young lady. But this time, I’m glad you did.”
Molly and her father exchanged warm smiles. Then Leonard turned his attention to George.
“In a way, George, I’m sorry you got caught up in this business,” he said. “We Starcatchers have worked extremely hard to keep our mission—our very existence—secret. And I’m certain your parents would not be pleased to know that, because of your connection with the Asters, you wound up being chased by wolves and a bear on Salisbury Plain.”
George smiled.
“But Molly tells me she’d never have found the Return without you,” continued Leonard. “And had you not been with her, I’d likely still be lying on the ground by the Altar Stone. You’re a young man of great courage, George. From the bottom of my heart, I thank you.”
Aster extended his hand; George, blushing, shook it.
“I’m in no position to ask favors of you, George,” said Leonard. “But I’m afraid I must do so now. You know what the Starcatchers are; you know what kind of enemy we face, and the stakes for which we are fighting. I must ask you to tell nobody what you’ve learned—nobody, not even your parents. Ever.”
George nodded solemnly. “I won’t, sir,” he said. “I promise.”
“Thank you, George,” said Leonard. “And now for you,” he said, turning to Peter. “It seems I’m making a habit of this, Peter. This is the second time I must thank you for saving my daughter’s life; and to that debt of gratitude I must add thanks for saving my own life, and that of my wife. Not to mention all you have done for the Starcatchers.”
Peter blushed a deep red. Tink, sitting in his hair, said: To hear him talk, I had nothing to do with it.
“What did she say?” asked Molly.
“She said thank you,” said Peter.
“Actually,” said Leonard, his eyes twinkling. “She said, ‘To hear him talk, I had nothing to do with i
t.’”
“You understand Tink?” said Peter, amazed.
“I do,” said Leonard, “and I want to tell her that the Starcatchers will be forever grateful to her for her courage and her selflessness.”
Tink, for once, was chimeless.
“Peter,” Leonard went on, “I made an offer to you once before, and you refused. But I want to make it again: please stay with us in London. You can live with us, as a member of our family. You can attend any school you wish. Your needs will be provided for. Your—”
Leonard stopped; Peter was shaking his head.
“I’m sorry, sir,” he said. “But I must get back to Never Land as soon as possible.”
“Never Land?” said Aster.
“The island,” said Peter. “Mollusk Island. We call it Never Land, because…well, because it sort of is. Anyway, I must get back there, sir. There’s pirates, and my mates need me.”
“I understand,” said Leonard. “But we need you too.”
Peter looked at him questioningly.
“This morning,” said Leonard. “I exchanged telegrams with a number of other members of our organization. I told them about our experience with this Ombra at the Return. As you know, Ombra—or something very much like him—was also a problem for us recently in Egypt. This morning I learned that, over the past few months, there have been a half dozen attacks on Starcatchers by these creatures…these shadow thieves.”
“So there’s more than one,” said Molly.
“I’m afraid so,” said Leonard. “Evidently the Others have a new ally—or a new master; we’re not sure which. But the Starcatchers, after centuries of having the upper hand, now find ourselves facing a formidable new opponent—an opponent that would have defeated me at Stonehenge, had you three not been there. Peter, you are a very special young man. You have unique abilities. Twice now you’ve played a critical role in helping us defeat the Others. I’ve no doubt that we’re going to need your help again.”
Peter and the Shadow Thieves Page 33
